Despite the fact that I have a wireless capable laptop and am surrounded by coffee shops with free internet it seems to take me longer to post here than it did in the Philippines. I guess I have had a few things to take care of this past month and life has the ability to be just a tad more fast paced & busy this side of the Pacific. What are you going to do?
So the past month:
Last time I posted I had just arrived from the Peace Corps to a slightly chaotic home base with my parents in Michigan. They are in the process of moving to Kentucky with my Dad’s new job so life has been rather crazy at home. I was there for most of the month sorting through old boxes cleaning out the random clutter that can build up to surprising proportions since middle school. Sorting & organizing life becomes much more interesting when periodically, sometimes on 4 hours notice, a complete set of strangers wants to wander through your abode and have you not there while they do it. I’ve never packed in such a neat & orderly fashion in my life (& hope never to have to again).
Besides generally helping around the house I also took a brief sojourn up to the Twin Cities to start apartment hunting & to see Bridget. That was a very successful trip, though it was extended as Easter plans in Iowa with my brother got nixed by a untimely tornado that made quite the mess of his town. He escaped unscathed but had to put in a lot of overtime getting the bar he works for up & running again.
The last excitement of my pre-move existence was a trip to Kentucky with my Mom to see the new house & to check out the area a bit. We went down for “Thunder Over Louisville,” which I’m told is supposed to be the biggest annual fireworks display in the States. It was ridiculous. They closed down one of the bridges over the Ohio river and had a string of launchers on the bridge and the main fireworks were shot off of two barges, one on either side of the bridge happily synchronized with each other. It was quite the show. I spent most of it wrestling with my internal dislike of fireworks. Ever since I started working for ASP watching that much money fire up into the sky for some interesting lights & noises has never appealed to me. I found two interesting mental moves that helped me enjoy the show more. The first is the fact that being angry.upset with something isn’t really a useful emotional reaction unless you’re in a position to do something about it. Those fireworks were going to go up anyway and I certainly wasn’t in any position to even voice an opinion on it let alone suggest they do something else with all that cash. The other realization is that (at least in this instance) the entire show is privately supported. Someone, a lot of someone’s, out there seem to believe that this extravagance is somehow economically viable for them to support (most of the supports were corporations as far as I could tell). I’d like to argue with economics, but I’ll wait till I finish my basic courses on the subject this summer to broach that concept.
I’ve been officially located in Minneapolis now since May 3rd. Over the past week & a half I’ve mostly been concentrating on seeing Bridget, getting my apartment settled, & trying out for Sub Zero. Alas I was cut from Sub Zero yesterday so now I suppose I should replace that particular aim with… say… finding a job? Should be a good time. I’m hoping to find some sort of lucrative night job (either bartending or waiting tables) which would allow my days to be devoted to both classes at the U of MN & finding some more meaningful volunteer work. There are plenty of options around the Cities for both of those, so now I just need to get a handle on what’s out there & start knocking on doors.
Hopefully now that life appears to have started to settle down a bit I’ll post more regularly. That is, of course, assuming I continue to have anything worthwhile to say on a regular basis. They tell me its supposed to be spring here, but its been in the 30s & 40s the past few days & threatened to snow so I certainly hope its warmer wherever you happen to be. Enjoy.
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